As a hardgainer, I have always had trouble gaining weight. My metabolism works at light speed, and it seems as though I’d have to eat ten meals a day just to put on a pound. Throughout my bodybuilding career, packing on the necessary mass has always been my greatest challenge.
A couple of years ago, I came to a point where I felt I had reached my nutrition “peak”. I was eating 6 to 8 meals a day, only an hour or two apart. I was stuffing my face constantly, even when I was full. I was choking down huge, chalky weight gainer shakes several times a day. In fact, I was absolutely certain that I was doing everything that could be done to gain weight. I had come to terms with the fact that I would always gain weight at a snail’s pace.
One day, after I finished a long session venting my weight-gain frustrations, my training partner had an idea.
“Hey man, why don’t you wake up once or twice in the middle of the night and eat something? I mean, when you’re asleep, you’re still burning calories. By the time you wake up, you must be in a serious catabolic state.”
Brilliant, I thought. I will set my alarm to 3:30am every night, eat some peanuts and force down a protein shake. And that’s exactly what I did. I figured that loading up on protein in the middle of the night would keep my muscles growing around the clock. At one point, I was even waking up twice during the night to drink a shake.
I ended up dreading going to bed at night, because I knew I would have to wake in a few hours to drink a protein shake. I do feel that overall, the shake was beneficial - my overall caloric intake went up another 500 calories per day.
But I neglected, for the first month, to think about the consequences: a serious interruption to my REM sleep cycle, and a catalyst to send my metabolism into action during the middle of the night.
Overall, I feel as though the shakes did help me gain weight (500 calories is a lot for anyone!) – but at what cost? I dreaded going to bed, my motivation sank, and I always awoke starving & lethargic because my metabolism had been working at super-speed overnight.
The conclusion: Unless you’ve got endless amounts of motivation, money, and no real need for a good night’s rest, lay off the midnight meals.
Yeah, if you’re going to try this at all I would only do it if you wake up naturally during the night… Setting your alarm is a big mistake.
It might also be wise to just keep the shake right at your bedside. Maybe a bottle of water and an MRP packet or something, and just slam it back and then go right back to sleep.